Category Archives: Hope

Bahá’ís throughout the world celebrate this day [beginning at sunset] as the Day of the Covenant, the Celebration of the Eternal Covenant between God and Mankind through His Manifestations and Prophets, eternal in the past, eternal in the present, eternal in the future:

“His Holiness Abraham, on Him be peace, made a covenant concerning His Holiness Moses and gave the glad-tidings of His coming. His Holiness Moses made a covenant concerning the Promised One, i.e. His Holiness Christ, and announced the good news of His Manifestation to the world. His Holiness Christ made a covenant concerning the Paraclete and gave the tidings of His coming. His Holiness the Prophet Muhammad made a covenant concerning His Holiness the Báb and the Báb was the One promised by Muhammad, for Muhammad gave the tidings of His coming. The Báb made a Covenant concerning the Blessed Beauty of Bahá’u’lláh and gave the glad-tidings of His coming for the Blessed Beauty was the One promised by His Holiness the Báb. Bahá’u’lláh made a covenant concerning a promised One who will become manifest after one thousand or thousands of years. –`Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith

“As the Sea”

As the sea swells, so the Covenant remains, promises fulfilled. Through Abraham the Friend of God, and Moses, Giver Of The Law; fruited and confirmed in Jesus Son of Mary given In His Person more–the Love of God–and through His Will, Submission under God in Hijáz through Muhammad, Seal of Prophets; From the East, Lord Krishna of The Three, The holiness of Buddha in Purity; The Fires of Zoroaster from the mountain; security from casuistry Within the Witness of The Báb, and Justice in Bahá’u’lláh `gainst the nursery rhymes of sophists And the worship of Creation over He who did create The whole with but a single Word, “Be!” Hosts exclaim and expiate Their cavils at the Word through numbers, and the terror of the tribes. Armies propagate Their synergies against the tide of history, bow the knee to what they rape, And call it truth. By God! The earth is weary of their weight. The Word alone remains; the Covenant alone withstands this dreary freight.

“You Own the Year”

You own the year and years before you As I the year and all that’s passed; Your signs are rising, eternity is steadfast.Quo vadis, then? I who serve eternities am overruled By sheer numbers, countless previous dispensations viewed In retrospect and circumspect in vast And spacious notions of impermanence and impasse. I see before the fact in part, imperfectly at present, pursued By spoils of the war and coupled with a dubious acquired taste For bitters, an acerbic memory gained close at hand or lost at sea. Nothing in this world is or is so stable That it is not utterly dependent, created, removed and recreated on the table Of bounties throughout creation; what God has willed to use or waste Shall be not be more or less than what it is and what is not shall never be.*

***

* “Protect me, O my Lord, from every evil that Thine omniscience perceiveth, inasmuch as there is no power nor strength but in Thee, no triumph is forthcoming save from Thy presence, and it is Thine alone to command. Whatever God hath willed hath been, and that which He hath not willed shall not be.

There is no power nor strength except in God, the Most Exalted, the Most Mighty.”

–His HolinessThe Báb, Selections from the Writings of the Báb, pp. 190-191

“Oh, I know”

Oh, I know it”s been said before but bears repeating:Unless a man embrace estates, his senseOf eternity, his gifts of endless strife and goals of regret intenseEnough to merit periodic casual to shameless open weepingIn the corridors; unless the deadly abyss of every night’s sleeping’sProne to breach and rupture within his dreams or by the clock;unless ‘neath the lens,His page is thus combustible by the light focused upon a spot,his joy dependsOn something well beyond his own heart’s contumely,his gates–his paradise, his weeping–Fall well beyond the storehouse of his eyes and its catalogue of fears,His light is changed to fire in tragedy and myths of talismans that guide his way.Again, unless all this is welcomed well before the final hour, his pride will swell,His vanity implode, and circumstance becomesa euphemism for all he sees as hell.Remember please that breath and breathing signify that death is ever nearAnd in these final years, satisfaction’s just another word for nothing left to pay.

“Sad You Say?”

Sad you say? I knew you meant it; Yes, my sadness drained through your fingers Leaving little more than moisture. Something of me lingers With you that you own is yours. Summits Of either joy or pain remain to use the heart, the limits Of the body—anywhere will do—from head to toe; these, the singers Intone its presence, equations flatter integers Enough to anoint themselves exclusive in finite intimates And variations for the sake of form. These flights of melancholy You mistook for yours; as well, your joys I imagined mine in the mirror, And neither of us were the wiser in the final calculation. If one of us is right, we’ll see our satisfaction and salvation In what little time remains to us in life; the eternal holy Light is never long in coming. If one of us is wrong, …there is no deliverer.

“That We Fall Is Natural”

That we fall is natural; that we rise, elephantine. The elemental flow of oceans cannot be A thing so scripted in the stones nor greater than it seems, But ever-striving, ever-writhing, natural peaks declining, Irreconcilable in their conniving, twice and more desired falling In or toward Themselves, the Mothers of all Waters, yes. Rivers Die and are reborn at once–revivals in their streams and noted divers Books, catalogued as tributaries and watersheds–calling And recalling from a moonstruck swollen pinnacle even to the least and last most holy drop. Confucius* said it long ago that greatest glories Come not so much in never falling, but in histories Of revision, sublimes in tectonic prodigies at the mountaintop. Little wonder save to mortals what the matter is;
energy is the bright selective gleam
Of noble souls who
like the stream, the river, the brook,
must at last rejoin the sea.

“The Peace, That Is”

The peace that is, some sense of fortune, love Of life, that is, the promises that dwell in hearts Whose beacon is the present. Darts And shafts, phantoms’ arrows, doves Of superstition and the flights of eagles not yet dreamed Become the weights of weariness, embellished chains of thoughts, Of past and distant memories; all these are. The nought’s Outweigh the should’s, the clarion chorus of what seems Will drown the melody of what is as patently, the past Is nothing more than magnification of future’s cold deception. Certainly, who’s to know but that at conception What was sure to be could never really last And what endures is petrified in quicksands of false alarms Because we dwell so near the morning’s light and yet so far.

“A Simple Chemistry”

A simple chemistry, the day, the night, And what of course is never meant to be; But still the hope is there, the simile That never quite transforms a noun nor quite Contents itself in action, so never mind a verb. But, then what a change of heart is there. Reaction taut, willingness, a kind of gas, an air Of great and greater expectations that serves No more than casual attention yet is so deadly. No, of course, It cannot come to this. But, yes, eventually it does. And with the cat’s release, it must. The thing is there to see, to feel, to taste. The horse Before the cart, perhaps, but nonetheless, a paradigm of waste, And with each fine turning of the wheel the love of wanton haste.

“Anxiety”

Anxiety brings to mind a smile, a certainty That what is good is merely stalled On sidetracks to avoid collision, the call To order from the ethereal unseen; eternity Does not disappear with so little provocation As a disagreement, a suspicion of a difference Of opinion, or what appears to be interference Even to the very gates of defeat. The invocation, “Thus far and no father!” is but a station’s stop And not a terminal carved in destiny. Nor is it understood to be a bending of the knee To anything short of order in the chaos and the melée. The shop Is closed when systems fail and nothing lasts forever: Where there is place and time, re-creation pulls the levers.

“Hope”

Hope Is nothing more Than the willing Acknowledgment And acceptance Of the natural inevitability of change. If change is possible, There is hope And since change is ubiquitous, It precludes fear or humiliation Or thoughts of annihilation Stemming from the predicament Of being an eternal being In a mortal, material existence.

It is but one reason Why the seeing eye Will recognize That if every believing soul Were reduced by Treachery, Abuse, Tyranny, Persecution And Genocide, itself, To a single soul, That soul will eternally proclaim, “I have overcome the world!”

From chaos comes ordre; it’s a promise Not a threat, and see to it that you heed A willing radiance, an acquiescence, the need For civility in the journey from initial surprise To final recognition, from knowledge in the eyes And from the illumined page while both are lost in wanderlust and steal Away to what for all the world seems Neither here nor there. Umbrage seeds both choice and compromise As winter’s cold surrounds the heart’s dissatisfaction, colder still than death Itself and not at all to anyone’s liking. Where do joys of spring Lead but to sorrows in the coming fall and from that fall, the season’s Proceeds, naked trunks and brittle branches, reason Feeding hollow hopes and simple traffic in dreams? What’s left, My friend, but bones of separation in the present and reunion in eternity?

Bahá’í Scriptures and Readnings

Bahá’í Writings for Morning and Evening
Readings of Scriptures and Writings from the Centres of the Bahá’í Faith to be read in fulfillment of the requirement incumbent upon all Bahá’ís that they read from the Creative Word every morning and ever evening…

Everybody Means Something
Articles, thoughts, observations and/or poetry about the same from a Bahá’í perspective regarding life and psychology; a most worthwhile read no matter what the topic or posting…

Myriad Lives
A site devoted to postings and discussion of Bahá’í Sriptures…

Bahá’í Thoughts and Ideass

Everybody Means Something
Articles, thoughts, observations and/or poetry about the same from a Bahá’í perspective regarding life and psychology; a most worthwhile read no matter what the topic or posting…

Myriad Lives
A site devoted to postings and discussion of Bahá’í Sriptures…

Louvain95
An intelligent site I have discovered that features the visual arts with taste and care for beauty and couched in a love of humanity…

Notes from an Alien
Notes from an Alien is an especially informative and interactive site dedicated to the subject of writers, writing, publishing, and encouragement to publish creative material. If one is interested in self-publishing as opposed to the traditional route of

Visual Arts Sites

Louvain95
An intelligent site I have discovered that features the visual arts with taste and care for beauty and couched in a love of humanity…

Writers of Poetry

Wrting and Writers

Notes from an Alien
Notes from an Alien is an especially informative and interactive site dedicated to the subject of writers, writing, publishing, and encouragement to publish creative material. If one is interested in self-publishing as opposed to the traditional route of